Antony Gormley's "Quantum Cloud"

Antony Gormley, "Quantum Cloud," 1999-2009 (series), Stainless Steel, 380 x185.5 x 127.5 cm

It's interesting to examine Antony Gormley's work as a whole. From the inception of his sculptures of human form, one can witness his evolution of thought. They began as means to translate three-dimensional figures into two-dimensional objects. It seems contrary to what we, as a generation, typically see—as we are more concerned with depicting three-dimensional figured in a two-dimensional space—but his works capture the essence of translating the opposite. Since translating three-dimensional space into two-dimensional space is impossible, Gormley imposes two-dimensional shapes onto three-dimensional figures. He began creating humans made of tiny blocks as if simulating pixels in a computer screen, but his methods transformed, and between the years of 1999 and 2009, he created his "Quantum Cloud" series. 

These sculptures intent to manipulate organic space in a different way than his past works. Instead of interpreting the human body as a solid and concentrated entity, he depicts as a force, as a fixture of energy in the world. In this piece along with its sister pieces, one can see the inherent human form surrounded by this "cloud" of "quantum" energy. And he does not envision this energy as neat and unified, but rather, chaotic and disorderly, rendering an interesting perspective of the human condition.